Btw - forgot to add the final step (not shown) that makes it look more realistic. Use filter > distort > twirl on the strokes layer (just a little!) to give it that final touch.

Anyway. I wanted to make a Tie Dye effect for a recent piece (see here [link] ) and searched fruitlessly for hours for a tutorial that created the exact effect I wanted.

So I made it up.

Assuming that someone else out there may want to know how to do this, I did this tutorial based on the steps I took. Now you have the benefit of knowing how to do it too, without the 45 minutes of screwing around with different ways of doing it to get it right! : D

enjoy

(And if you use it, I'd love to see how you did - feel free to comment with a link, and I'll check it out!)

*UPDATE

I've expanded on this tutorial with a quicker, better method for creating the white streaks. Check it out here [link]

I'm wanting to do a candy corn tie dye for something I'm working on. I have tried both ways--putting all three colors on one layer AND putting each color on its own layer. Neither way I do it will it allow me to Filter - Distort - Twirl (or Spherize, even). Neither one is higlighted. WHAT AM I DOING WRONG? Thanks for your help!

I used standard 'round' brushes, the size I use depends on what resolution image I'm creating and how big I want any given stroke to be. You can create great effects using fuzzier edged brushes - in any case, once you've run it through distort->blur, it doesn't matter too much

THANK YOU SOOOOO MUCH FOR THIS TUTORIAL!!I'm responsible for designing my university's "Peace, Love, and Pete"(Pete the Pelican is our SAB mascot) tie-dye shirt and I had no clue how to approach it using photoshop...until now

Again, thank you. I can't wait to experiment with different swirl patterns!

Hey my friend showed me this and I tried it out. Worked well for me but I couldn't find a brush that did the white convincingly, so I skipped it and put on a canvas filter instead. Thanks for the easy-to-follow steps!

Oh my gosh, I'm so happy you made this! I have to create a tie-dye background for the poster for the school play (it's set in the '70s), and I haven't been able to figure out a way. Thank you so much for the tutorial!

I use a pressure sensitive tablet when I draw to the computer. If you're stuck using a mouse, a method you could use would be to use the pen tool:

Method one: Just make lines leading in with the pen tool and then right click > render brush strokes > simulate pressure Method two: make shapes like the brush strokes using the pen tool to make vector shapes then fill them in.

Either method you can find more on by goodling pen tool tutorials for photoshop

over to the right side of the screen (if you're using the default setup) there should be a little pulldown menu (selection box with a down arrow to the right of it) that says "Normal" which is the typical layer type. From there you should be able to change the layer type.